According to a story in my local paper, The Chicago Tribune (you might have to register, but it’s free), last Saturday Salman Rushdie accepted the paper’s award for lifetime achievement in literature. Despite the fact that security was tight (Rushdie’s still under a fatwa for having written The Satanic Verses) and the event took place at 10 in the morning, the 1800-seat hall was still sold out. After cracking some jokes, Rushdie got down to business:
It was on the subject of freedom of expression, in academia and elsewhere, that Rushdie’s serious side came out. “It’s nonsense, and it needs to be called out as nonsense and rejected as thoroughly as possible,” he said of attempts on college campuses — by university administrations and by students themselves — to engage in various forms of censorship. “There was an episode a few months ago where (some incoming) students at Duke University refused to read Alison Bechdel’s book (‘Fun Home’) because it was written by a lesbian and offended their religious beliefs. [JAC: I wrote about that here.] I thought, ‘Maybe you should just not be at Duke. Maybe you should just step down and make room for people who actually want to learn something.'”
Warming to his theme, Rushdie said universities should be refuges for the unfettered exchange of ideas. “The university is the place where young people should be challenged every day, where everything they know should be put into question, so that they can think and learn and grow up,” he said. “And the idea that they should be protected from ideas that they might not like is the opposite of what a university should be. It’s ideas that should be protected, the discussion of ideas that should be given a safe place. The university should be a safe space for the life of the mind. That’s what it’s for.”
He’s right that exposure to new and challenging concepts is one of the best things about going to college.
It is also why religions don’t want their people to have a well-rounded education, and some actively say education is evil.
I’ve always found arguments against education from religion very weak. It really doesn’t say much for its tenets if they will collapse at any exposure to different ideas. Sounds like fear and weakness to me, which is exactly what religion says it’s the opposite of.
I had someone arguing on my website a few months ago that the Taliban wasn’t against education for girls, it’s just that it wasn’t the right time yet. My response? When the fu*k exactly is the right time?
The “right time” is probably when the population is so brainwashed that outside influences can’t shift the programming. That’s a bit of an indictment of religion and thankfully none has ever found a way of doing that.
I would say that the right time to educate the girls is at exactly the same time you’re educating the boys. But I suspect that these folks would have no problem eliminating education for both boys and girls at an early age.
Exactly!
SR from 3 years ago on the same theme for 7 minutes: pretty much the gold standard. x
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42CpSV8pxog
Good link. Yay first amendment!
… prohibits the making of any law respecting an establishment of religion, impeding the free exercise of religion, abridging the freedom of speech, infringing on the freedom of the press, interfering with the right to peaceably assemble or prohibiting …
That the fatwa remains after all these years (didn’t he write it when Reagan was still in office?) tells me that Islam has no sense of reason nor compassion…and that it doesn’t take fatwas very seriously.
Islam is nothing but a joke, but it’s a very bad and entirely unfunny one.
b&
You’re just like the Islamists, Ben.
“There are no jokes in Islam. There is no humor in Islam. There is no fun in Islam. There can be no fun and joy in whatever is serious.” Ayatollah Khomeini, 20-8-79.
You new atheists and fundamentalists are as bad as each other. x
…let me guess…we’re just like fundamentalist Catholics, too, for observing that contraceptive use is verboten in Catholicism….
Funny how that works, innit? How agreeing with the experts of a delusion on how delusional the delusion is somehow gets you painted with the same delusional brush by the fence-straddlers?
b&
Happens all the time, Ben, and it’s exasperating.
“Spreading your hate!”
“Eh? They’re the ones who say it, not me. Never mind whataboutery, this is whatthef*%kery.”
Allele akhbar. x
Ayup.
I think the ultimate in whatthefuckery in this has to be gay liberal feminists standing up for the Islamist underdogs…the same Islamists who defenestrate gays and prohibit female flesh from being seen in public.
b&
A “fatwa” is an opinion or ruling by a particular authority (in this case Khomeini). His opinion could only be retracted by himself, and he is of course now dead.
Islam is not a hierarchical system in which there would be people to over-rule Khomeini, and thus the fatwa can’t really be over-ruled. Of course other authorities can issue counter-fatwas, but it would then be up to individual Muslims which they chose to accept.
But you make my point.
Even with the Ayatollah himself dying not long after he ordered Rushdie’s murder…over a quarter century ago by now…enough Muslims take the Ayatollah’s orders seriously for Rushdie’s life to be credibly in danger.
Mafia dons have that kind of power. Western heads of state…don’t.
b&
Maybe Khomeini is speaking from beyond the grave?? Like Jeebus spoke to Dubya?
Yup, Khatami revoked the fatwa in 1998 after laughing-boy Khomeini was dead. Hitchens reported seeing banners in support of the fatwa at the University of Teheran after it had been rescinded.
Say what you like about Khomeini he sure knew how to fire up a student. x
…or maybe Khomeni is like Elvis, and he’s not dead and can be seen at the local corner stop-and-rob?
b&
That’s enough Ayatollah-wallah jokes. Onto the liberal Rouhani from the land of the Shiraz grape.
Chuffin’ Ada, we’ll see the twelfth Imam before you convince a Frenchman not to have wine with his dinner. In France, red wine is a red line. x
A red line? Cherry red, perhaps? Say, a Maginot cherry line?
…sorry….
b&
In the Huffington Post, Geoffrey Stone discusses his view on the role of free speech on a campus. His ideas are based on the University of Chicago’s position on free speech, which Professor Coyne has alluded to in previous posts. Stone’s argument seems quite reasonable to me.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/geoffrey-r-stone/understanding-the-free-sp_b_8535304.html
A pretty sad day for colleges in American when we have to be reminded by a foreigner what they for, colleges that is.
As Trump and the republicans would say – we need to get to work on that wall and keep these guys out of here.
The Brits also have their problems with authoritarian students in higher education.
But still, I think the Brits hold the high ground over us on this one. Their students go authoritarian apes**t over moderate muslims attacking radical islam. At least that’s an important substantive issue. Our students, OTOH, seem to go authoritarian apes**t when the administration refuses to ban some Halloween costumes.
I’m much less sanguine than you, eric, about the British universities. Besides, the US universities have also had their ban on Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Bill Maher moments. The one thing you Yanks do have over on us is the backstop of the 1st amendment: free speech is your fundamentalism, which only goes to show that some fundamentalisms are good.
Sure, the best universities in the world are American and British and of course they couldn’t thrive without free speech: and if you want to see the Picasso of free speech watch the lesser-seen youtube film of Nicholas Kristakis’ discussion with the Yale students in the quad.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gM-VE8r7MSI
But the American discourse on this Alien-meets-Violet-Elizabeth-Bott ‘In a safe space nobody can hear you thcweam’ eruption is framed by the 1st amendment: that immediately puts the snowflakes on the defensive. The British conversation is framed like this: ‘what are the limits of free speech?’ You start a goal up: we start at 0-0, or maybe even at 0-1.
And I suspect that a greater proportion of British academics would be free speech limiters. For example, Prof. Craig Calhoun, Director of the LSE who banned Jesus ‘n’ Mo t-shirts 2 years ago: the object of his ire, Dr. Chris Moos, has written an account of the incident here. x
http://freethinker.co.uk/2015/06/29/the-rise-of-university-faith-warriors/
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Wonderful. Now, one can hope that he is invited to speak at Yale. Surely he has sufficient cred in the area of human rights that he could cause some of the students to reassess their positions.
Probably be rejected as too risky and offensive.
I’d bet every cent of my next 10 paychecks that, in the wholly unlikely event that Rushdie would be extended an invitation to speak at Yale, he’d be uninvited in short order.
I’m legitimately scared that we are witnessing the final triumph of post-modernism over Keynesian progressive values on the left, which will ultimately prove the final nail in the coffin for liberalism in the West.
Jesus Crisis. You are depressing the shit out of me.
Meh, post-modernism surges and retreats. Every generation rebels against its parents. Hippies give birth to yuppies who give birth to system-cynical gen-Xers who in turn have given birth to idealist extremists. Take some shaudenfreude in the thought that these student’s will have their own kids turn against them, and probably object to their attitudes about censorship of ‘dangerous’ speech even more than we do. 🙂
I surely hope your right.
Yes, yes. I do not think all ideas deserve equal time and funding, and I’d be picketing if they used my tax money to teach bogus stuff as science– instead of science. Let’s say, if astronomy class used horoscopes instead of teaching astronomy. I wouldn’t censor it– I’d just object to my money being wasted. We don’t need to be protected from any ideas at all. Good for Rushdie.
Eloquently and beautifully stated.
I wonder how many of today’s college students are aware of the fact that when I went to college it was discussions about things like the native American genocide, racism, sexism, US imperialism that students just like them considered challenging concepts that students needed to be protected from?
If I were a university – wait, does that make sense? – OK, but if I were, I would make this the topic of a permanent essay on the admissions application. Something along the lines of “You are in class, and you hear something from the professor or from another student that shocks and even offends you. How do you react? What do you think about this situation? Does content that students find offensive belong in a university curriculum? Suppose another student stood up and said ‘I find what you just said offensive, and I think you should apologize’ – what would you say in response?” Any student who doesn’t fundamentally support free speech in that essay, and show a grasp of the idea that a university education should challenge your dearly held beliefs, would be disqualified from admission. Weed the little fascists out right at the start. :-> Well, maybe these are values that universities need to promote and inculcate; maybe one can’t expect them to be there from the start. So I take it back. But that’s my first urge – rather similar to Rushdie’s “step down and make room” thought, but a bit more pre-emptive. :->